Original Analysis

This Interview first appeared in Italy's La Repubblica newspaper on Sunday, 18 November 2001.  The English translation is via Alta Vista's Babel WWW Translator.

It needs to be emphasized that this is a rough translation.  Readers should use a translation service personally familiar to them for a more exacting translation.

ROME ——
Vincent Cannistraro has directed the section anti-terrorism of the Cia, has worked to the National Security Council, the national Security Council, has been special intelligence advisor to the Pentagon. To the next day of the 11 september, has been to along listened from the commission of the Conference. E' a gioviale American with far Italian roots. To Langley the reputation of pragmatic has been made". It does not love to turn in round to the issues. From the terrace of the hotel Eden, fixed Rome dipped in one light of primaverile grace, while sorseggia a Sauvignon Sanct Valentin: "Osama Bin Laden will hit between Thanksgiving and Christmas, between next Thursday, 22 November, and 25 December. It is not never piaciuto to make me of the alarmism. They are not the type. But never as today they are sure of those that I say ".

Where it will hit?

"In The United States. But it could hit here also, to Rome. Because here it has a primary target".

Which?

"The Pope".

How ago to dirlo?

"The experience of these years has taught to us that Bin Laden has not never left half a job. In 1993 it tried to blow up the World Trade Center. The plan, also causing of the victims, the 11 fact failed and september all we know those that it is happened. To the eve of the new millenium, the plan bojinka previewed to blow up at the same time Boeing Americans in flight on the Pacific. The 11 september we have uncovered taken root how much was the obsession of Osama on the use of jet commercial for fine terroristic...".

And this thing enters there with the Pope?

"In 1995, for Manila, in the Philippines, Ramzi Youssef, man of To the Qaeda that had participated also to the attack to the Twin Towers in 1993, were prepared to kill the Pope in visit on the island. **time-out** in the appartamentocovo in which Youssef have lodge and from which be successful to escape little before that the police Philippine make irruption, come seize the map of the route that must follow the Pontefice, vestment sacred necessary to the command omicida for confondersi in the crowd of the faithful, device of control at a distance of the timer that have prime the explosive destined to polverizzare a bridge to the passage of the car armor on which travel the Pope. Giovanni Paul II was a objective then and remains a objective today. Giovanni Paul II is the spiritual leader of those crusaders in whose Osama comparisons its has pronounced in the ' 98 fatwa".

What renders the threat today more concrete?

"Four days ago, immediately after the fall of Kabul, mullah the Omar has turned from the microphones of the Bbc a terrible warning. He has promised to immani destructions in the United States and violences that escape to the understanding of the men. These words have not been perhaps sufficiently analyzed. But one lets to say me from attached to the jobs that in that threat are not only the desperation of a leader who feels to franare the land around to himself, but also the preventive rivendicazione of a escalation of the terror already planned".

Because it indicates a lasso of precise time therefore: 22 November, 25 Decembers?

"Because the allied bombs, our bombs, have not stopped of falling during the Ramadan and Osama will not have mercy or respect of the sacred festivity to the Christians, the Christmas. Because Osama and mullah the Omar will not let to take you live before having dragged the West in an other bath of blood".

We come to the United States. It says that Osama will return to hit. Where? How?

"The attack will be able to come once again from the sky, but also from the sea. And I explain myself. When it is had kamikaze, the main problem of planning of every terroristic action has been resolved: to concur with the authors to disappear cancelling traces and indications, once carried a.termine the attack. Today, to Osama, they are sufficient four, five kamikaze that they are embarked at the same time on commercial Boeings and that to an established hour they are simultaneously made to explode in flight".

The controls in the airports have been strengthened.

"Unfortunately a ruotine does not exist still that renders the flights to the hundreds for hundreds sure. E' a terrible truth who all know: airlines, agencies of emergency, Fbi, Cia. All know that, today, more of the ten for hundreds of the baggages loaded in the holds of the airplane it does not come passed under machines to i beams x in a position to characterizing explosives that normally escape to the controls standard. Today, the reasoning that makes is that if a passenger rooms to edge with just the regularly loaded baggage in the hold, that passenger and that baggage is sure. But, as I have said, this reasoning stops of valid being if that passenger is a kamikaze, martire".

It has pointed out also to possible attacks via sea.

"For a long time a yemenita marine society comes held under tightened observation that it has its mercantile fleet in the port of Aden. These ships make the bobbin with both the coasts of the United States and the fear is that they can trasformarsi in floating bombs to blow up in the ports of Saint Diego, Saint Francisco, Seattle or in that one of Newark, in the New Jersey".

Ships to blow up with conventional explosive?

"Perhaps. Perhaps and I say because if it is from excluding that Osama decides of conventional nuclear heads it is sure that it is in possession is of valigette atomic Soviet, of uranio is enriched for the fabrication of the so-called ones dirty bombs, the dirty bombs. Hour, if to edge of a ship or an airplane it were made to explode one of these dirty bombs, we would pay the consequences for tens and tens of years".

Nuclear headquarters Americans are between the possible objectives?

"Naturally yes. And just for that I was saying on purpose of the uranio enriched. Today, Osama has a strategic problem: to arrange a blow that it makes to impallidire how much happened the 11 september. Therefore, an action of destruction of mass with psychological consequences still more painful. A produced outbreak " poor " nuclear from a dirty bomb, that is a reaction nuclear primed from the destruction of the reactor of one central would catch up the scope exactly".

It has been supported that already the 11 september central nuclear had to be hit one. That the airplane fallen in Pennsylvania was not directed on the House White woman but on the system of Three Mile island, not far away from the point in which the Boeing it is hasty.

"I know the hypothesis and is evocative. Personally, creed that the Boeing of the Pennsylvania was destined to schiantarsi on Capitol Hill to Washington, on the cupola of the Conference. And however we will not never know it. Of the rest, those that we know me seems already sufficient... O not?".

18 November 2001

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